US

Illustrated by Denver Gillen, Robert L. May’s poem about Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was first issued in 1939 as a give-away booklet for children by a Chicago department store, Montgomery Ward.

Dealers travelling to the United States for the New Year fairs season remained optimistic last week as sterling jumped to its highest level against the dollar in 14 years. The continued weakness in the US currency raised the prospect of a two-dollar pound in time for the January showpiece events in New York and Florida.

November saw the art market hit a new high as Christie’s capped a remarkable series of New York sales with a record $240m (£131m) for post-War and Contemporary art.

Feeding frenzy sets new record as bidders get their fill despite absence of Lloyd Webber Picasso

Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern art sale of 83 lots on November 7 generated $238m (£131.5m) and was the auctioneers’ highest auction total since the previous Impressionist and Modern high water mark of May 1990.

Jackson Pollock’s 1948 drip painting Number 5 has set a new record for a painting. Mexican financier David Martinez has reportedly paid $140m for it in a private deal brokered by Sotheby’s.

AMERICAN folk art moved into new territory at Sotheby’s New York on October 6 when this life-size Indian chief weathervane with a rich verdigris patina sold for $5.2m/£2.9m (plus 20/12% buyer’s premium).

MASTER Drawings in New York, a new Anglo-American trade initiative will be launched in January. It is modelled on Master Drawings in London which has been held since 2001.

IT would have been the most expensive picture ever sold. At $139m, the private deal between two American billionaire buddies would have upped the record high for any painting by $4m. But the deal is now off.

Sotheby’s New York was closed in the afternoon of October 11 in the wake of the plane crash that killed the two people onboard, injured 21 and briefly raised fears of another terrorist attack on the city.

In 1862, the English missionary Father William Duncan brought around 70 Tsimshian Christian converts to an abandoned Native village and established a model Church of England mission settlement at Metlakatla in Northern British Columbia.

CHRISTIE’S are hoping to generate up to $140m for the four remaining works by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) that were part of the high-profile Bloch-Bauer restitution case.

ALMOST one in five antiques dealers have not returned a year on from Hurricane Katrina, but there are tales of better fortunes for some.

The North American trade in antique barometers is under threat from mercury management legislation now operating in a dozen states.

A New York based company is offering what they believe is the world’s first title insurance policy for fine art.

Atlantique City, the self-styled World’s Largest Indoor Antiques and Collectibles Show, has introduced a VIP ticket package for collectors wishing to enter the fair a day early.

Plans to launch a new design, antiques and fine art show at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York have been shelved as the venue returns to military service during the proposed November 16-19 show dates.

OF the many publications generated by Captain Cook’s exploits in the Pacific, the most curious is surely A Catalogue of the Different Specimens of Cloth Collected in the Three Voyages of Captain Cook to the Southern Hemisphere...

IN what must be one of the least surprising private treaty sales negotiated, The Martin Luther King Jr Collection will go to Morehouse College, Dr King's alma mater in his home city of Atlanta.

THE notorious map thief Edward Forbes Smiley III has appeared in court in the US where he admitted to stealing 97 antique maps worth more than $3m.